The Bold New World of Televisions

By Mark E. Smith

I’m lying in bed. The TV won’t work, something about it cannot connect to the network. I’m old enough to remember when simply pulling a knob turned on a TV – and it worked every time. Now, I just stare at the spinning ceiling fan.

I think about my conversation with my best friend, Drew, today. He’s the wisest soul I know, and he inexplicably knows more about any subject than he should. We talked about what it’s like being in the throes of life crises. So many people tout the growth that comes from it. However, those are people speaking from the other side. As Drew noted, when you’re in the middle of it – an ended relationship, a health crisis, a job loss – you struggle just to breathe, where five minutes feels like an hour, a night feels like an eternity. There’s a tunnel vision in those times, the loss of everything joyful. No one stops to smell the flowers when it feels like life, itself, has stopped.

And, it’s OK, it’s all OK. Adjusting to a new normal is… well… normal. When we have the wind knocked out of us, we need time to get back up, we need time to rediscover ourselves in this new space. Anyone who tells you to snap out of it has never been there, or worse, has forgotten what it’s like to be there. There’s a time to be in such a space, to just be.

My wife comes in and wonders why I’m not watching TV? I explain the technical issue, and she lies next to me, staring at the ceiling fan, also lamenting the loss of televisions with antennas that simply turned on.